Anomalies... So many questions in the Joe Wilson matter

National Review Online ^ | 10-07-03 | Jed Babbin

[Renfield]

Intelligence analysts — like all detectives — find excitement in anomalies. An anomaly in conduct — action, reaction, and such — may be insignificant, but is often a clue to what is about to happen, or why something already has. In politics, as well as in intelligence, we ignore anomalies at our peril. Right now, the CIA is awash in them, and the president should be asking George Tenet some really tough questions about Joe Wilson

In the long buildup to the Iraq campaign, the Bush administration turned virtually all of our intelligence assets to gathering information about Saddam's WMD programs and connections to terrorism. We had historical data, mainly from the reports of UNMOVIC and Richard Butler, the former U.N. chief weapons inspector. From them, we knew that in 1998 — when the U.N. inspectors were first sold out by Kofi Annan and then kicked out by Saddam — Iraq possessed several types of chemical and biological weapons. We knew, also, from high-ranking defectors such as Dr. Khidir Hamza — who previously headed Saddam's nuclear-weapons program — that Saddam was still doing his best to get his nuke program back on track. I spoke to Dr. Hamza several times, and he gave me many details that seemed both credible and chilling.

Before the final case against Saddam could be presented to the U.N., there were loose ends to tie up. In February 2002 someone in the CIA sent former career diplomat Joseph Wilson to Niger to check out that information. By his own description of his "investigation," Wilson "spent...eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people." Current and former government officials and "people associated with the country's uranium business." Wilson found the mines regulated by the U.N. and run by an international consortium (which includes Saddam-friendly nations such as France and Germany) and concluded that it would be hard for the government to sell uranium without being detected. Wilson reported to the CIA — only verbally — that he didn't believe it would be easy for Saddam to get uranium from Niger.

On September 24, 2002, Tony Blair's government published a sanitized intelligence report entitled, "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction." In part it said, "Iraq retained, and retains, many of its experienced nuclear scientists and technicians who are specialised in the production of fissile material and weapons design...there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Iraq has no active civil nuclear power programme or nuclear power plants and therefore has no legitimate reason to acquire uranium."

In January's State of the Union speech, the president said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Soon after, there were leaks that the Brit report was false, perhaps even based on forged documents. The Brits stood by their report, but the president's words soon became a focus of antiwar pols and media, proof enough for them that the case against Iraq was a fraud.

In an eve of war interview — on March 13, 2003 — Wilson said the president hadn't made the case that Saddam was connected to terrorism and argued that multilateral cooperation in the U.N. was too important to risk by preemptive action. He made the Albright/Scowcroft argument saying, "...it's very clear that the way the administration is proceeding, and its willingness to go despite the United Nations, and the willingness to use the military option before a good part of the world believes that war is the only remaining option, puts at risk the rule of law and it also puts at risk the whole multi-lateral system which we've worked so hard since 1945 to build." And ever since Saddam's regime was toppled, Joe Wilson has been a media darling in dozens of interviews and one key op-ed to condemn the military action. In July, two senior administration officials told columnist Robert Novak that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative, and Novak published her name in a column about the political storm surrounding Wilson.

All was quiet until about three weeks ago, when the Washington press corps began trying to rouse itself into a feeding frenzy over the leak of the identity of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame. Plame is a CIA employee who apparently had some connection to covert operations. Revealing covert operatives is a crime. The media (remembering the fun days staked out at the federal courthouse on the concrete expanse known then as "Monica Beach") can't understand why Karl Rove — publicly blamed for the leak by Wilson — hasn't been indicted yet. Trying to stir the press cauldron, the Dems are all over the airwaves demanding a "special counsel" to investigate the leak. Some Dems are even suggesting a revival of the "independent-counsel" law to which they bade farewell gladly in 1999 after Ken Starr taught them it could be applied to people who weren't Republicans.

The leaker may or may not be found. If he is discovered, he should be punished as the law provides. But the leak while titillating, is unimportant. While we occupy ourselves with the Plame name blame game, we are missing the most important elements of the Wilson affair: the anomalies.

Everyone who works for the CIA in everything having to do with intelligence or foreign governments is required to sign a secrecy agreement that provides the Agency the right to approve and censor what the employee may wish to say or write for public consumption. In Wilson's famous July 6, 2003 NYT op-ed, he said, "The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the CIA paid my expenses, (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government." It is unheard of for anyone to not be required to sign a secrecy agreement. So did Wilson get that article approved by the CIA?

I asked the CIA, and a very testy spokesperson refused to answer. I asked if Wilson ever signed a security agreement, and she sounded about to burst from stress, but she'd give no answer to that question either. Maybe she was just having a bad hair day. Or maybe the CIA is feeling some well-earned heat.

A senior intelligence-community source told me that no one as vocal as Wilson could possibly be bound to the usual security agreement. So Wilson wasn't required to sign one. Why? The fact that he was paid only his expenses is no explanation. That's Anomaly Number 1.

Why was Joe Wilson chosen for the Niger mission? A career foreign-service officer, he's no intelligence pro. He's not an expert on nuclear weapons, and he's sure no expert on covert purchase of WMD-related materials. He served as an "Africa expert" in the second Clinton administration, but hadn't been in Niger since he served as a flunky in our embassy there in the early '80s. He did serve — with courage — as acting ambassador in Baghdad in 1990. He had no unique or current knowledge of Niger, but he does have deeply felt political views which cannot have resulted from some recent epiphany.

Wilson worked for Al Gore as a congressional fellow in the mid-Eighties, has given money to John Kerry's presidential campaign, and believes his mission in life is to "destroy" both "neoconservatives and religious conservatives." Anyone political — which means everyone in the White House and the CIA hierarchy — must have understood the risk the president took in stating WMD as the casus belli against Saddam. Though the nuclear part of the WMD equation was never a principal part of the case for war, it was part of it. Anomaly Number 2: Why was Wilson — uncredentialed in the critical areas, and devoted to a political agenda antithetical to the president's policy — chosen for such an apparently controversial mission?

Wilson's "investigation" was patently inadequate. According to his op-ed, he made no effort to talk to the IAEA, Niger military or intelligence authorities. Dr. Hamza told me in considerable detail about a highly organized and well-financed black-market operation by Saddam's regime to buy every sort of nuclear weapons-related equipment and materials. It's not hard to suborn people with enough money, or to buy uranium and smuggle it out of places such as Niger. Over time, any amount could be smuggled out to Iraq. Anomaly Number 3: Why was Wilson's verbal report apparently taken at face value? No intelligence professional should have relied on it.

Although it's not an anomaly, no one seems to know who hired Joe Wilson for the Niger job. Reports and sources all say George Tenet didn't, and that someone well below him did. One report says that Plame recommended him. To whom, we don't know. Who chose Wilson, and why?

It's possible that Wilson's trip and report were a put-up job, intended to embarrass the president sooner or later. But that analysis overlooks Wilson's persona, his political loyalties, and his actions. I don't believe in conspiracies. But I don't believe in coincidences, either. If I were the president, I'd unambiguously support the leak investigation, and prosecute the leaker if he can be found. With equal urgency, I'd be working hard to find out why these anomalies exist. And wondering what other disagreeable surprises may be coming my way from the CIA in the next twelve months.

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Wilson sure is a Dem. operative, blackie. Pretty obvious one. DC is infested.

Not sure the left-press understands how serious many are about truth and justice post 9-11.

[blackie]

I'll go back to my favorite saying about the rats and their blindness to the obvious:


The evidence is there ~ Too bad the GWB hating democrats and their lackeys in the media are so brain dead!

[Timesink]

This is the Plame Name Blame Game ping list.
Freepmail me to be added or dropped.
You may also find all posts to this ping list by searching on keyword PLAMENAMEBLAMEGAME.

Note this is a HIGH-VOLUME ping list!
Please ping me to any Plame/Wilson threads!
There is no way I can catch them all myself!!

[Wolfstar]

Excellent article. Thanks for posting it. Many of us here on FR have been asking the same questions almost from the moment the phony Wilson scandal broke. I'm delighted to see more and more people with access to microphones and print columns doing the same thing. We may never know if some of them followed our lead here on FR, but the results are what count.

[Wolfstar]

Thanks for the ping to the excellent article. Seems like the tables are beginning to turn just a little bit on Joe Wilson and his cronies. I also like the fact that a number of articles are beginning to ask the question of what's going on with the CIA. Tenet's, ummm, tenure (no pun intended) has been a disaster for this country in my opinion.

[Samwise]

I suspect that the Democrats may deeply regret having made such a stink!

For 'tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his owne petar -- Shakespeare, Hamlet III iv.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

While the CIA paid my expenses, (my time was offered pro bono)

Anomaly number 4: Isn't this a violation of the posse comitatus act which, inter alia, prohibits offering services to the Government for free? (Hence FDR's "dollar a year men") as a bulkward against vigilantism?

[Lady Heron]

Thank goodness that reporters are finally beginning to ask the questions that need answering!

If somebody broke the law by exposing an agent of the CIA (if that is what she is) then get him. But, the bigger question here is, was the CIA used to help one political party smear the other. Now that is a desperate situation that needs correcting now.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for that excerpt! Very appropriate, Samwise!

[Maria S]

"...Plame, a very good friend of $inator Hildebea$t..."

This could be a juicy bit of info...can you source your comment?

[barryselby]

FBI FILES

[tioga]

Yes, who signed that expense report! --very good point

[oldmanlegg]

I heard this and I can answer this, she is not! Operatives don’t go to work on Arlington Blvd. Operatives don’t draw checks from the CIA or any other government agency. {They work for the New York Times, IBM or similar entities.} Their Husbands / Wives, and for sure Administration officials, don’t know they are operatives, they think they work for the NYT.

The lady is a diplomat’s wife. What did she disguise herself as when she was in the Embassy?

I assure you there are no unknowns who work in Arlington. Moscow, Beijing and every major capital in the world has mug shots and bios of everyone who works there! This whole thing stinks.

[windchime]

You're welcome, Wolfstar. I thought it related well to the information you posted last week.

[InterceptPoint]

This is just an excellent article but he missed a very important anomaly:

Why would "a senior administration official" tell the Washington Post that the "Wilson's Wife Works for the CIA" story had been shopped around to six different reporters before the Novak story was published. Would any good loyal Bush Republican do that? I don't think so.

Amazingly Novak has stated that he was NOT one of those six reporters and that nobody had shopped the story with him. My conclusion: the WP source is either a holdover Democrat with an agenda and telling the truth or, more likely, is a holdover Democrat and is simply lying. Remember, all of this came out well after the Novak article was published. Plenty of time to dream up a good story for your friends at the WP if you want to do a little dirty work for the Dems.

So, I'm still waiting patiently for any of those six reporters who were given a headstart by Mr: Senior Adminstation Official and failed in their duty to write the story that the Dems want to turn into another Watergate.

[PhilDragoo]

I don't allow for George Tenet being out of the loop on this.

Tenet didn't plop off the turnip truck:

Woolsey was the on-the-ball DCI who saw Ramzi Yousef as an Iraqi agent--and thus had to get the ax.

traitorrapist42 brought in John Deutch whose intention was "to f--k them [CIA]", which he did by:

Compromising 17,000 CIA files on his unsecure home computer.

Deutch was "investigated" in the intentionally desultory manner to allow him to slip out to CitiBank.

After naming his successor the innocent naif George Tenet--who has been crosswise with any link of Iraq to terror, or, for that manner, to any determination of Iraq as threat, imminent, long-term, or mid-range.

Now--under Tenet's nose--a series of improvised explosive devices are built within his agency to injure, maim or kill the commander in chief.

Tenet has needed a boot up his ass since he totally failed to detect, deter and prevent September 11.

At this point, he should be handcuffed to a chair bolted to the floor and evacuating in a bucket beneath a hole in its seat until he provides answers--

The handful of "anomalies" of author Babbin are merely the ten percent tip.

How about Al-Ani and the Atta meet in Prague? What do we know, George? Oh really. Well, sit here and think about it.

For goodness sake, Gladys, our president's father was DCI--he knows how it works:

When Garrison grilled Cliff Bertram aka Shaw DCI Helms was asking every morning at the briefing "are we doing enough for our people in New Orleans?"

CIA is no more than CYA--Robert Baer's See No Evil and Bill Gertz' Breakdown have made that clear.

What seems to be the delay in cleaning house?

"New Tone" is going to get us another domestic terror attack and Hitlery as der Fuerher.

Fire Tenet:

[reformedliberal]

According to the media (and I have not seen or don't recall the original source), Plame is what is officially known as *noc*: no official cover.

[Renfield]

Well, obviously. I came to this same conclusion about 5 minutes after the story broke. You are right, it will be very intersting to see how this plays out.

[GOPJ]

bump

[Reb Raider]

Wolfstar,I know we heard they are going to look at Wilson's phone records, do you think they will be going through the CIA computers--Ms.Plame's specifically--to check email contacts?

Also,wasn't the original charge by Wilson that Bush ignored his evidence before the war and in his STUS, even though we now know the CIA itself ignored his "evidence" and never briefed Bush or Cheney on it in the first place? I missed the apology...